NLP and self-sabotage

start something new

I described an answer in this article. Here I will describe another answer. And I’ll describe it with a health example that I hope everyone who cares about their health will easily relate to. Suppose you decided to lose weight. You started eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep, and marking your accomplishments on a calendar. Visually marking your progress would motivate you and give you a way to measure progress. Maybe you made a mark for each thing per day. You did well for a few days, and you even started to like all the uninterrupted ticks on the calendar. And you began to notice the effects of progress. So you continued to function successfully for a few more days… which turned into weeks… And you began to feel a surge of energy, lighter on your feet, smaller in body, slimmer in the mirror…

…and then there was a point where you thought ‘I’ve been doing it too good for me, so I can afford a gift. You stopped the ascent and maybe you got into some of the things you were doing before you started losing weight. At the time you decided to stop, you may have felt that ‘I have been doing very good for me’.

Why the new feels strange

And this is where we are coming to the answer. The feeling of being too good for ourselves takes us out of our comfort zone. And that is never comfortable for us human beings. So we stop going back to the old ways of touching base with our comfort zone. Family is comfortable. Out of our comfort zone we doubt: ‘this can’t be true, I can’t be doing East well’, and we don’t recognize ourselves… ‘Who am I (becoming)?’, we can ask ourselves, because we feel that this is not us!

Make the new the norm

The way NLP takes us to higher ground is to make the state of doing too well for us the norm. To make it the norm is to practice it until it becomes the norm. Practice = pretend that the state of doing it too well it is the rule. Once we have agreed to pretend that this state is the norm, we will feel more comfortable doing it “too well.” Therefore, we will easily maintain it for a longer time. Even after a few days, the feeling that we are doing too well will fade, because we have been practicing to perceive it as the norm.

Of course, we must treat ourselves, but perhaps differently or healthier than we did in the old ways. And immediately after treatment, we have to go back to pretending that what was going too well for us a few days ago is now the norm. A week will pass and ticks will accumulate on the calendar. You will like the ticks, yourself for winning yourself over, and even more your surge of energy. That way you’ll get by for a few more days… which will turn into weeks… And after a month you’ll be well settled on the new plain. Some say it takes 28 days to create a habit…

…and keep the new norm

After 2 more months, if you persist, the ‘new’ plane will become the norm and your body will even ask for this norm. Your old ways of “treating” yourself will become awkward and foreign to you and that will be reliable proof that your “new” norm is now firmly established. The rewards will be immense, whether it’s losing weight or in any other aspect of life.

If you’re sabotaging yourself and really want to move to higher ground but need help, let’s talk.